Short Term Thinking

From Zanecorpwiki

You have to be really careful when you question the wisdom of the market. Any decent market captures a lot of thinking from a lot of perspectives. Not only thinking, but on the ground experience.^{[notes 1]} It's also one of the only places where considered, staid opinion is not drowned out by the artificially polarized extreme we consume through media and news outlets. My point being that there's not only a great quantity of opinion, but you could argue it's a higher quality opinion.

So it's one thing for me to say some talk show pundit has it wrong, but quite another to say that the US electorate has it wrong. I don't point this out to be even handed, but show you how daring and prescient I am. ;)

The electorate has it wrong on the cause of economic woes. We should be smart about how we approach survey data, but these are pretty straightforward questions. "Do you blame Obama for the state of the economy?" and "Do you blame Bush (W) for the state of the economy?"

The answers among (self-identified) Republicans has always been "yes/no" (except maybe right after election, not sure). Among Dems, it's clearly been "no/yes". Among independents, though, it used to be "no/yes", but has now shifted to yes on Obama.^{[notes 2]}

There's a lot of strangeness in this.^{[notes 3]} The most important oddity is the extreme short term nature of the electorates thinking. Strange not because it's unexpected, but because it's so clearly wrong and maladaptive.

I say clearly wrong because clearly Bush screwed up the economy. There's no doubt that Obama now has responsibility going forward (that's the job after all), but--and maybe I'm talking out my ass--I believe it's well accepted the economy runs months, if not years and decades behind most policy. So to blame the guy in office after less than 2 years when the official start of the crisis, just as a matter of historic fact, started on the other guys watch after he'd been in office 8 years is silly. I don't know if it's ignorance or just wanting someone to blame (by which I mean we feel the need to blame somebody and W is effectively out of reach at this point), but whatever it is, the idea that Obama is at this point as much or more to blame than Bush for the economy is pretty clearly incorrect and dangerous.

Before going on, I should say that part of my conviction on this point comes from my own experience. I blamed Bush far more than I should have. He's guilty, yes, but by the logic of long term though, I have to also blame Clinton. And the other Bush. And a lot of people who aren't the President. There's so much blame to go around, that it gets diluted and it's easy for us to ignore those spots which are inconvenient for our would view.

The problem isn't of course "being wrong". It's the effect of being wrong, and the effects here are serious.

Notes

1. ↑ Maybe what Heidigger would call praxis?
2. ↑ Referencing summary from podcast, Econtalk 8/6/2010, so not sure if they've switched on blaming Bush. The way it was presented, it sounded like a boolean. You can blame one but not the other... which would strange. But that's a topic for the main article.
3. ↑ First, but not critical to my main point, it's odd that the question is presented as an exclusive or. Maybe not always, but that's how it gets summarized. "Do you blame Bush or (but not both) Obama for the present state of the economy?" As if it's impossible for two politicians in a row to fuck up. I think it may be meant and received in the spirit of "Who do you blame more?" but even that is only a little less strange as it's like asking, "Who do you blame more for robbing the bank, Bonnie or Clyde?" and then using the answer to absolve the slightly less guilty party.